Best backup solution

Dirk Diggler · 21 Feb 2016 at 10:45

If I had 2*6TB drives, one to be used with Plex and the other for backup and only 4GB of data to store, what would be the best solution for backup:

Copy the data to both drives, and as I add to the drive that the Plex server uses, I also remember to copy across to the backup drive.
A RAID setup.

I've never used RAID, and am trying to work it out. Basically, I want to go on the assumption that one of the drives dies with no way of retrieving the data.

rpstewart · 21 Feb 2016 at 10:58

RAID is for redundancy and availability rather than backups.

Keep the drives separate and sync the "live" one to the backup disk regularly. Best best is to use the backup disk externally so that it's only on when needed.

Dirk Diggler · 21 Feb 2016 at 11:00

rpstewart said:
RAID is for redundancy and availability rather than backups.

Keep the drives separate and sync the "live" one to the backup disk regularly. Best best is to use the backup disk externally so that it's only on when needed.

Makes sense, what would be the best sync method... Simply arrange files by date on both drives and see what is newer on the live drive? Or is there a more eloquent solution?

rpstewart · 21 Feb 2016 at 12:42

Something like rsync or robocopy will do it all for you.

bledd · 21 Feb 2016 at 12:59

robocopy /mir "x:\source drive\folder" "\\destination drive\folder"

That will copy all changes from source to destination.

Dirk Diggler · 21 Feb 2016 at 13:15

bledd. said:
robocopy /mir "x:\source drive\folder" "\\destination drive\folder"

That will copy all changes from source to destination.

Stunning.

Cheers.

bledd · 21 Feb 2016 at 14:28

Either schedule it or type it up in notepad, then save it as 'backup script.bat' or whatever, then run it each time you want it to do the backup.

Dirk Diggler · 21 Feb 2016 at 14:37

bledd. said:
Either schedule it or type it up in notepad, then save it as 'backup script.bat' or whatever, then run it each time you want it to do the backup.

Just to be clear...

If source is D: and destination is E: the syntax would be...

robocopy /mir "x:\D:" "\\E:"

bledd · 21 Feb 2016 at 14:43

hi, if they are both hard drives in your machine, then you would use 'x:\foldername' 'y:\foldername'

Best not to do the the root of the drive, as there are hidden and system folders. you'll get weird things happening.

...

you would use \\server\folder if it was a networked drive on another machine, I just used that as the example.

List here what your source and destination folders are, I'll write the example for you

Dirk Diggler · 21 Feb 2016 at 15:01

Source - D: Media Server
Destination - E: Backup

I never thought of hidden files in the root dir, good point.

Thanks.

marc2003 · 21 Feb 2016 at 15:36

It's perfectly fine to robocopy the entire drive but you need to use the /XD (exclude directories) switch like this...

Code:

/XD "System Volume Information" "$RECYCLE.BIN"